Dear Diary
by Abby Ebon
Summary: Sora Hoshi prompt; Slash, M/M, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle. Harry was gifted the Riddle Diary - by owl - in the summer previous to the Chamber of Secrets.
1. Chapter 1

**Dear Diary**

_Abby Ebon_

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_Note_; this is _Sora Hoshi_'s prompt, given as follows;

Harry Potter - Harry/Kinda-good-Voldemort(Tom) - Parseltongue=weakness

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Harry was dreaming of flying, when there came an insistent tapping at the window. Being a naturally light sleeper, as one had to be in the Dursley household, he woke. He checked firstly upon Hedwig to the source of the noise, finding that her amber eyes were intent upon the outside, so Harry looked there for the source of the sound, finding an owl resting on the window sill, tapping impudently against the open window. It was being polite, in the manner some owls took.

Hurriedly he got out of the bed, his sheet had seemed to tangle around him of its own accord during the night, yet he struggled free. It was not one he recognized, but the package addressed to him by name proved it was not sent in error.

Harry absently gave the owl a handful of treats, while secretly finding the golden and brown feathered bird a bit intimidating; it was clear enough an Eagle Owl with its piercing yellow eyes and ear tufts tilted almost inquiringly. Hedwig was watching the larger fellow carefully, but he only hooted scathingly.

Harry watched to two for the first sign of a fight, quickly unwrapping the package, during the night was the only time that Harry allowed Hedwig out of her cage for some midnight flying, so he dared not make a sudden move to put her away with the stranger owl so near. She wouldn't likely _approve_ or go along at all with such a plan.

In his hands was a black journal, he flipped though the blank yellowed pages. On its cover was a single name Harry couldn't make out in the darkened room. Harry turned it over, as if the odd item would reveal more about itself, there was nothing else to learn from the outside. He looked up, toward the owl that had brought the package, thinking that there was maybe a letter to go along with the mystery.

Harry looked up just in time to see the owl fly silently out the window and into the night sky.

'_Who do you belong to?_' Harry wondered at the journal, not truly surprised when there was no answer aloud. He trailed his finger along the spine, it was indeed in good condition, the book was made out of something like leather, and it certainly _felt_ very old.

He took a quill from beneath the loose floor board that hid his school things, his _magical_ school things. It had come as a shook, learning that he was truly as different as he had suspected and been treated. He was a wizard born; his magic was in his blood, his mother and father being a witch and wizard. He knew some spells, granted, but none that could tell him the answer to his question, or _why_.

The tip of the quill dabbed into the ink, and Harry made a mess of the first letter in the word '_My_', but he finished more carefully made wary of the ink, '_name is Harry Potter_.' He was still getting used to writing in the magical way, with parchment and quills.

Harry scribbled down the date, and then, to his shock, the words he'd just written started disappearing, and new ones replaced them.

'_Is that really the date, Harry_?' The journal asked, and there was a sense of urgency in the neat lettering.

For a long while, Harry found himself watching those words, which _he had not written_, and no one else could have because he was _alone_ in this room save Hedwig. He pushed his glasses further up his nose, wide eyed and staring at the page until those words faded. Harry looked away then - finally, to Hedwig, feeling awkward yet relieved that those eerie words were gone, until he looked back at the page –planning to close the journal, and found a plea.

'_Please, Harry,_ _are you still there?_' Harry swallowed down the strangeness he felt at this; he was – after all – a wizard. Or, rather, a wizard in training - compared to _that_, what was the oddity of a journal that wrote back? Harry had thought only to write down his name, the date, and what had been happened to him since he'd gotten his first letter from Hogwarts. Maybe this was simply how journals were written in the magical world. Shaking off his unease, Harry decided there was no real harm in answering the journal.

'_Yes_'. He wrote, sharp and to the point.

'_Hello, then. I am Tom Riddle; you're a wizard, aren't you_?' There was something spine tingling odd about this, how different it seemed, to see the writing on the page, how the words were so different from his own sprawled letters, the journal's – _Tom's_ – writing was neat and readable. It was strange, yes, but oddly compelling.

'_Yeah_, _I am_.' Harry saw no harm in admitting this to a journal that called itself Tom. Harry thought there might be no answer as the letters seemed to fade on their own, without hurry, as lazy seeming as the letters.

'_Very good, so was I_.' Tom declared for his eyes alone, and there was something flushing and triumphant about how the words read. Harry found himself smiling a little; amused by the apparent glee another took in the fact of being wizard. He would have thought himself alone in the entire world with the knowledge, if not for Hermione, who was as 'real' as he to muggle eyes.

'_Are you trapped in the journal_?' Harry wrote, as the worry occurred to him. He could not imagine how Tom would be put into a journal, and he did not dare consider how Tom might _get out_. Harry decided if _that_ was the fate of this boy in the journal, Harry would do what he could to help – even if he had not the least idea to _how_.

'_Oh, no, I put my memories away in here, like a __Pensieve__. Do you know what a __Pensieve is?_' Harry did not, but he wasn't about to admit that to some wizard's journal that looked enough like a school book to give a second glance. Though Hermione would think, probably, a book that told you all the answers to your questions was a useful tool indeed. It seemed somehow condensing, that question, but Harry could not have said what it was about the words that clued him in to the fact that admitting such a lack of knowledge would do more harm then good.

'_Why would you put your memories away in a journal that anyone could come by and take_?' Harry wrote down instead of yes or no, as it seemed a more intelligent question to ask. There was a long pause as the words faded and for a moment Harry thought that there would be no answer, and then letters slowly and carefully appeared.

'_I will show you_.' They seemed pressed down hard upon the page, and Harry knew from experience that if he had done something of that likely he would have broken his quill.

A box appeared and then became a widow, and words under the page in Tom's hand writing stated; '_Touch it_.'

Harry bit at the end of the quill, putting it down on the bed sheets and bringing his ink stained finger to the center of the little window box. The surface rippled like a stone thrown into the lake, and there was no parchment where Harry thought it ought to be. Distance distorted and reality twisted, and Harry shut his eyes tightly, physically sickened by the disturbance.

He opened one green eye, then the other, both his eyes gone wide. He found himself in a room much like his own, with bleach white walls and two bunk beds tucked to each wall, there was door between them. The air was cold, not only in temperature, but in…feeling. It didn't feel like a friendly place to stay the day, let alone the night.

"Where am I?" Harry asked aloud, his voice shaking only at the first word. He had thought he was alone, but someone stirred in the shadow of the corner bed, the lower bunk. One of them was not empty, after all, for there was a boy there – this boy peered at him, all serious brown eyes and messy black hair, a boy that looked a lot like Harry did.

"In my memory." The boy told him, matter of fact, he spoke older then he looked.

"_When_...?" Harry asked, baffled as he turned about himself, he knew Tom to be a wizard, but like no wizard he'd ever met, certainly. For sure, no wizard would stay in such a place as this if they had another option.

Harry did not, and so that meant…

"This is where I lived as a boy; I grew up here, in the orphanage….every summer I would have to come back." Tom had no choice in this, and Harry saw the similarities between them pulled up and bridging. It sickened him, that they had both been trapped like this, offered no other choice.

"Like me, then." Harry said it softly, and for the first time he was something like annoyance flash over Tom's features, it was gone in that same moment leaving a puzzled sort of look remaining.

"How do you mean?" Tom asked when it became apparent that Harry would say no more. Though he was silent, inwardly his memory played before his eyes, and it boiled up and out, and before Harry could reach in himself for control, realizes at all what was happening, a scene was playing before his eyes.

_Tap, tap, tap_ – on the glass cage, the snake within a lethargic and depressed creature, dying by inches for all that every need was met for its health. Harry had sympathized, oh how he had sympathized, his magic reaching out to let the snake out of a cage, it was the same sort of trap Harry was in, watched and seen and _tapped_ at and everyone expecting some reaction when all he felt inside was tired and empty. So magic had let Harry see what was coming, if only he'd had the foresight to grasp the meaning, to understand.

_Freedom_…

It was only a spot of self-serving revenge that had trapped another in the glass cage. Harry remembered the snake, and its words – or had that only been his imagination? – Still, would it still thank him now? Had it survived?

Harry didn't know, and then became aware of his surroundings again, and Tom's watching gaze. _He's seen it all_, Harry realized, and felt a sickening twist in his gut. It seemed to stretch forever, the wait for Tom's next words, but when Tom spoke it was nothing Harry had expected.

"You speak to snakes, then?" Tom asked softly, and hearing the words was strange, like an echo, but then Harry was within Tom's own memory, then things were expected to be a bit odd.

"Yes." Harry admitted, easily, for surely in a world where a wizard could wave a wand and produce magic, one could speak to all sorts of creatures. That would be the easier magic, Harry would have thought.

"You must never let anyone know Harry, it's called Parseltongue and there are those among wizards and witches even who would think you evil for it." Tom was intently serious, and Harry dared not question him on if he was _sure_.

"It only happened the once." Harry protested, sure that it would not happen again now. Tom's lips quirked up in amused sort of look that seemed too cruel to be true.

"Oh? We've been speaking it sense you showed me your memory, which begs the question, _how_ did you come to learn to do that?" There was keenness there, an intent that seemed as sharp as a blade.

"I don't know what you mean, was I not supposed to be able to? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…" Harry trailed off, for Tom's expression made it plain that he thought no apology was needed, it was merely the how that Tom appeared to wonder at, not that Harry was sorry for it.

"Never mind that, no harm was done, it is merely…_interesting_." Tom drawled the last word, lips still quirked in his particular smile. It was not _friendly_, but cruel and somehow cold for its harshness. It was that intent that would stop at nothing to root out the truth, whatever the cost that made Harry realize they'd been speaking Parseltongue all along.

Harry rubbed at his eyes, feeling tired and drained, and when he opened them again, Tom was watching him. It seemed in Tom's habit, that trait, but Harry didn't think it would bring him any harm, so would say nothing.

"You ought to go to sleep, we can speak in the morning, if you'd like?" Tom trailed off, not seeming too bothered by the show of sleepiness – some trait of a physical body that Harry imagined that a memory like Tom could not feel, but might successfully reproduce by mimicry.

Harry nodded then found himself sitting on his chill sheets, the room very still and lonely around him. It was strange, that Tom seemed warmer, more real, to Harry then this very house he'd lived his whole life in, as far as he could remember. Only magic was so burned into his memory of what made him feel…alive.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dear Diary**

_Abby Ebon_

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_Note_; just to be clear, Harry is a twelve year old boy, Tom Riddle was between sixteen and fifteen in his fifth year, when he split his soul to make the diary.

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Tom closes his eyes, and the words Harry had written flash before his eyes like lightning bolts, like the scar on his forehard; the shadows of light lingering in his mind. In those oh-so-careless words a puzzle lays; one that Tom intends to solve, and one that endears Harry to Tom.

Tom will never forget those first scattered paragraphs on a page, how telling they are of Harry's character. You can tell much of who a person is by the way they write, and they are so rarely aware of the subtly in the art of reading them. It's why novels have readers, and authors can make a living with words on a page alone. Tom is a master at reading between the lines, so words mean much more to him then some other sorry sot.

Tom had been caught by these words, tangled and snared by them, like they were a web. He has to, wants to – must – get to the heart of who Harry Potter is. Not only is it out of his own terrible curiosity, there is dread necessity in it – this boy, he has killed Voldemort; killed Tom Riddle.

Had killed _him_….apparently, more then once.

The saving grace of it is that Harry doesn't know or realize (and much never) that Tom Riddle and Voldemort are one in the same, where in Tom becomes Voldemort and is him at the same time – and who would have the nerve to figure it all out? So few did, even from what Tom can remember of his own life – but Dumbledore might know, he was always so suspicious of him, and here at the beginning of the life of Voldemort is Tom. Perhaps with this beginning lays the secret to preventing the same ending, with Harry Potter playing the part of his executioner.

With the flicker of his closed eyelids, he summons those first words again – Harry might never be so careless again. Tom treasures these first words, for the puzzle in them, and something else that Tom does not linger on.

_My name is Harry Potter. _

_I am a wizard; I've a Hogwart's owl letter to prove it. Not much else though, most of my school things are under the floorboard, so my relatives don't see. They don't like magic, and they don't much like me, either. In fact, they tried to run away from the school owls, with me. I think that last part was mostly because they couldn't leave me alone here, and move away, without their actions coming under suspicion by our neighbors. _

_My relatives are three, my Uncle Vernon, who is three times as big as man should be. Hagrid is the only person I've seen bigger. _

_Aunt Petunia is tall and thin, I see something of myself in her, though I like to think that's more my mother's blood by their parents then hers. Dudley, my cousin, I used to think it was all his fault, how they treated me, second-best and all that, but now I think it's the other way about, Dudley follows their example. It's because of my parents, they're dead, but they had magic – just like me. _

_Killed in a car accident, is what I was told when I asked once. Killed by Voldemort, so Hagrid says. I know now to believe Hagrid's words over theirs. It's strange to think all I know from them is so wrong, but then, it's not, because some of their opinions I learned in school were wrong too. _

_I just finished my first year in Hogwart's and I can say, what they think about magic is just as wrong. It's wonderful, the feelings I get when I use it, when I see it used, when it's all around me in Hogwarts. I live for that now that I'm away from it, the promise of all that magic, it's what keeps me going here, locked away from all that as I am now. _

_It's the worst thing in the world, living with them; but magic makes it worth it. _

_So, my first year in Hogwarts, I was sorted into Gryffindor, its emblem is a lion, and its colors are red and gold. My dad's house, Hagrid says, and I wonder sometimes if it was my moms too. I took a train to Hogwart's and that's where I met Ron and Hermione, though I only started to get along with Hermione after Ron and I saved her from the troll in the dungeon that'd gotten into the school Holloween night and tried to go after her in the girls bathroom. _

_I'm the first first-year Seeker at Hogwarts in a century, all that means is I'm alright on a broom. I love to fly, was just dreaming about it as I was woken up by the owl that gave me this ancient black diary. I don't know why that is, but it might be a gift for my birthday. That's still strange for me to think, let alone write, before Hagrid gave me a cake and took me on a trip through __Diagon Alley where I got school supplies including my first wand; I never celebrated my birthday. _

_I think that's almost unheard of in the wizarding world, they all do it – call me the "Boy Who Lived", because I not only survived Voldemort – I somehow caused him to becomes something worse then a ghost. I saw him like that, all black smog, like something filthy. He was a spirit inside Professor Quirrell manifesting at the back of his head. Quirrell tried to touch me…and he died. I never want something like that to happen again. I killed someone. Two someone's, if you count Voldemort; yet I didn't really do anything at all, its more like – I don't know, I'm the instrument of it? Like whatever it is doesn't work if I'm not involved and Voldemort isn't – or someone who means to kill me. _

_I could see he wanted to kill me. It wasn't in his eyes, or his sneer, it was just coldness – just, hate for me. Dumbledore says the source of that power, it was love. My mother's love for me protects me. I don't know how to feel, to know I was loved that much once – that I might never be loved so much again. That I don't want to be that loved, to have someone willing to kill for me – to die for me. _

_Remembering the smell of Quirrell's flesh burning as he touched me, of his screams as he died, burned to ashes and falling apart like he was made of sand; maybe my relatives aren't so wrong about magic being bad – or there is a certain kind of magic, isn't Voldemort called the Dark Lord for a reason?- that is wrong and dangerous. _

_How can love be so utterly bewilderingly, terrifyingly, wrong? Love is supposed to be good and nurturing, yet it's been used as the power, the drive, behind magic – to kill. _

_Still, I can not – will not say – that…that I wish my mother had loved me less. That seems disrespectful to her. I've seen her, once – in a mirror that grants the viewer their greatest desire. Her, and…my dad, my family, I think – that one look in the mirror is all I'll ever see of them. _

_The last look at what might have been. _

_Its summer now and I await another Hogwart's owl, but I've heard nothing from my friends. So, the question is – are they really my friends after all? _

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Harry didn't realize until the morning light shown through the threadbare curtains, and he turned to touch Tom's diary, under his thin pillow, that it was his birthday today. His lips quirked as he turned to roll onto his back, diary in hand; he looks up at it, with a sort of tired awe; as if it's something significant – something special – and it is, but it's _Tom_ mostly. He'd had a taste of this feeling before, with Hermione, with Ron – its friendship, a building connection between them, like a bridge to unite them.

_Tom_, Harry thinks as his fingers skim over the leather skin of the diary.

A small smile plays on his lips.

It isn't just that budding friendship that lets him smile; it's more then that – and less. Here is a friend who can't abandon him, who won't leave – simply because Tom _can't_, he's a dairy, a _memory_.

Harry opens the diary to the first page, and there is a familiar drawing of a window. Harry runs his finger over it, and he sees only the ripple of the surface, like a stone tossed in.

Tom is sitting on a couch in a room painted all green and silver, it's strangely dark here – but it isn't damp. It's just like the dungeons of Hogwarts.

"Happy birthday, Harry..." Tom hisses… _hisses_ because he is speaking Parseltongue.

Harry flushes red, and he doesn't know if it's because of embarrassment or anger.

"You…you're a Slytherin!" He accuses, feeling betrayed.

"I was, once, I suppose." Tom agrees, as if it doesn't matter, though he gathers his knees to his chest, as if to present a smaller target – or bid his time in coiling to strike.

"Then, it doesn't matter to you – that I'm Gryffindor?" Harry gets the feeling that Tom is laughing at him, though he is so still and silent that Harry would almost forget that Tom is here if not for Tom watching him unblinkingly. Harry has only ever known one Slytherin – and that's Malfoy.

"I don't see why it should." There is a spark of blood red in Tom's deep brown eyes.

"Oh." Harry says, softly, feeling foolish.

Tom pats the cushion on the couch invitingly, and relived only in that Tom will have something to do with him, Harry obeys the silent request. Tom turns to him; the press of his knees against Harry's thigh is warm and real.

"Tell me then, what do you know of the House of Slytherin that makes you hate it so?" Harry lowers his eyes to the couch, fingers playing and pulling on a thread there.

"Well, I don't, not really, only…only Malfoy's in it, and Ron says only dark wizards and witches come from Slytherin." Harry glances up to Tom, who's never looked older or wiser then him until he sees the playful look in Tom's eyes, and the almost teasing grin.

It's a look Hermione gets, when she's about to correct Ron or he in school work.

"Nonsense, they're children, they can be good or bad like those in another House. It's the traits in them that the Sorting Hat, well, sorts. It's like with Dudley and you, Harry – because his parents treated you rotten, he wanted to please them by bullying you." Harry flinches a little at the comparison, as it hits deep and sharp, but Harry thinks about it instead of reacting, and Tom can't help but be pleased.

He never really thought he had it in him to be a _teacher_, no matter that he had admired Dumbledore for the skill, and tried to surpass and impress the older wizard as he was growing up. Tom wonders if this _feeling_ is like what Dumbledore felt, this power over impressions – this taste – it rolls through Tom, and he smiles – is still smiling when Harry speaks.

"I never thought of it like that." Thoughts rumble though Harry's eyes like a storm, shadows and lightning, in flashing green eyes.

Tom is very aware that Harry, sitting so closely next to him, is _his_ – and just as powerful as Tom. He's aware as never before, that he must be careful – or risk losing his own sense of self. Something in Tom bulks that that, he's always heeded an instinct for survival, but it's never crawled up his spine like a chill, never like this.

This is dangerous, but Tom presses onward, because he must – because he's damned by his own curiosity.

"You've never needed to, but tell me, does this Ron have red hair?" Harry nods, as Tom suspected he would.

"His last name, is it Weasley?" Harry nods again, and Tom can not help his half-smile.

"Ah, then they are Purebloods." Tom sits and waits, while Harry stirs, staring in the dim light until he determines that Tom isn't going to say anymore until Harry asks.

"What has that to do with anything?" Harry asks softly, frowning. The look is full of suspicion and a curiously twin to Tom's own – Tom wonders what else Harry might have inherited from the lightning bolt curse scar upon his brow.

"Nearly everything, with the old Pureblood families – like yours, and the Weasley and Malfoy boys, they have a history with each other. If you look into those families, they are all related, like mine with yours; and yours with them. History repeats, as is often the case, and so the original feud between the Malfoy and Weasley family lives on even in that rivalry." Tom's eyes don't stray from Harry's face as he speaks, but even as he does, he still sees Harry's fingers playing with a strand, a single thread – and it's as if he pulls on it long enough, everything will unravel. It won't make any better sense Tom knows, if Harry succeeds in pulling free that thread. Like with knowledge, you have to have a lot of it to weave it into something useful.

"What was it, originally that set them against each other?" Harry asks voice soft and echoing.

"Purebloods take only marriage so seriously." Tom winks with an almost playful grin, as if he can't find _anything_ amusing or ridicules as that fact; it's a plainly mocking expression against the serious words. Harry urged on by that look, snickers. It's simply so silly and childish, all that carrying on and posing and being brats – and it's over something _like that_. Harry doesn't understand it.

It's the first pleased sound he's made all summer, that secret snicker and Harry is surprised by it. The snicker becomes a gasping laugh. If Tom notices how odd something like that _should_ be, he doesn't show it. He grins along, as if pleased by a joke.

Harry lay panting on his side of the couch, gasping for his breath back. Tom stirs, serious suddenly, his expression darkly anxious.

"You'd better go back, you've been inside here long enough – time just doesn't stop when you're here, you're mind, soul – whatever – it leaves your body. Like meditation." Harry doesn't really understand, but he does nod along with what Tom says.

Tom seems reluctant to see Harry go as he brushes his hand over Harry's forehead, soothing the hairs back into place. Harry is surprised by the touch, eyes blinking wide open when he wakes, coming back to his body. He hadn't remembered anything _like that_ from last night, but perhaps he just hadn't remembered, he was tired then, having been woken up in the middle of the night by the owl that had delivered the diary. His eyes are heavy even now, like he's sleepy from being just woken up, but it doesn't stop the warm jolt in his navel.

He's surprised by the tenderness Tom had showed to him, Tom is someone who seems to watch remotely, but that touch – there was nothing distant about it.

Harry had never felt something like it, not really – only Ron's brotherly absent-minded contact had been like that, but with Ron it was almost unthinking, with Tom – Tom knew what he had done, acknowledged it, and expected Harry to figure out what it meant (more then the obvious) for himself.

Another reason to stare wide-eyed and open-mouthed presented itself, yanking his thoughts from the loop centering around Tom like he was gravity.

There was something standing on his chest, it was bent over and thin and shallow skinned. It was almost the size of a cat, and its eyes were wide and green like a cat. Its ears were huge and pointed; the head seemed to wobble as it tilted to regard him.

"W-what are you?" Harry stuttered, and it scampered off and stood upon the floor regarding him. Harry rose to sit, following it's movements as if he would be tested upon them – and maybe he would be, if Harry got to ask Tom about this…

It bowed with an old world elegance, its nose touching the floor, "Master Harry Potter, Dobby be a House Elf."


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